Texts

y separately published work icon The Spare Room Helen Garner , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2008 Z1457068 2008 single work novel (taught in 10 units) 'Helen lives in Melbourne, and her friend Nicola flies down from Sydney for a three-week visit. She will sleep in Helen's house, in her lovingly prepared spare room. This is no ordinary visit. Nicola has advanced cancer and is seeking alternative treatment from a clinic in Helen's city. From the moment Nicola steps off the plane, gaunt, staggering like a crone, her voice hoarse but still with something grand about her, Helen becomes her nurse, her protector, her guardian angel and her stony judge.' (Publisher's blurb)
The Journalist and the Murderer!$!Janet Malcolm!$!!$!!$!
In Cold Blood!$!Truman Capote!$!!$!!$!

Description

This subject focuses on the concept of the real. Students are asked to engage with the history, contexts, conventions and current debates centred on the notion of 'the real'. Students choose different approaches to these issues in terms of creative and theoretical perspectives. The subject aims to develop students' awareness of the wide possibilities and scope of non-fiction writing and enables them to produce an extended piece of non-fiction writing in a workshop environment. The laboratory acts as a context for researching how the notions of the real are associated with questions to do with society, culture and globalisation no less than to do with issues of subjectivity, the senses and corporeal knowledge. Each class acts as a space in which students test out received and experimental approaches to writing and thinking about the real. Truth telling, the use of fictional mode in non-fictional forms of writing, concepts of simulacrum, verisimilitude, revelation and authenticity, and the ethical contexts of documentation are key features of each class's work. Students are asked to nominate the area in which they intend to write and are assisted in researching and contextualising that area.

Subject objectives/outcomes

At the completion of this subject, students are expected to be able to:

1. write using creative and imaginative practices

2. analyse and edit self-reflectively and critically

3. reflect on the complexities of writing non-fiction and dramatic representations of non fiction.

Assessment

Assessment item 1: Non-Fiction Presentation 20%; Assessment item 2: Non-Fiction Synopsis 20%; Assessment item 3: A Non-Fiction Narrative of a Person or Place 60%

Supplementary Texts

Theodore A.R. Cheney: Writing Creative Nonfiction, Ten Speed Press, 2001

Lee Gutkind: The Art of Creative Nonfiction, Wiley and Sons, 1997

Barbara Lounsberry: The Art of Fact: Contemporary Artists of Nonfiction, Greenwood Press, 1990

Norman Sims: Literary Journalism in the Twentieth Century, OUP, 1990

John Hersey: Hiroshima, Penguin, 2001

Other Details

Offered in: 2010
Current Campus: City campus
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